Community Lounge, Introductions and General Discussion Discussion, OnStar will be selling our speed, location and seatbelt usage after December? in General Discussion; i thought that voice control was what the ford systems were all about... keeping your eyes on the road
and ...

Re: OnStar will be selling our speed, location and seatbelt usage after December?

Orconn raises a good point, but in hindsight, not that I care or that it is intentional, but now that I think about it, I am not a part of any of those Customer Loyalty programs. In fact, I seldom if ever even use a debit card and tend to pay cash for things.

Re: OnStar will be selling our speed, location and seatbelt usage after December?

Many popular vehicles use a computer in much the sense of a black box on an aircraft, which records what the driver does with the car. Even if said car is never in an accident, I suspect that company-owned dealerships may retrieve this data when a car is traded back in to them. Maybe more often, if it receives frequent service there.

Re: OnStar will be selling our speed, location and seatbelt usage after December?

Originally Posted by RippyPartsDept

i thought that voice control was what the ford systems were all about... keeping your eyes on the road

and i'm really hoping that they ditched windows embedded auto for this new system

That's correct. The whole point is to enable voice control to have far more power than it has had on traditional Navigation systems. For example, there's the ability to read your incoming text messages to you without ever having to take your eyes off the road. If you are an Android user, then you know of course that Android allows text to speech on texts as well, so technically you could just about automate that entire process and never have to touch the phone for anything. People are going to do it regardless, so much like Bluetooth for voice calls, voice to text for SMS messages is a logical next step.

My ideal situation is essentially to be able to dump my entire phone in a console or keep it in my pocket as I drive, and be able to achieve every possible type of communication or music selection via voice or a very few taps on the vehicle display. MFT may not be perfect, and it may still be far from it, but I appreciate the gist of what's trying to be achieved there.

Re: OnStar will be selling our speed, location and seatbelt usage after December?

Yeah, I agree... I was responding to Aron9000's comment that "It forces you to take your eyes off the road to change the climate control, adjust the radio, turn on the seat heaters, and like an iphone, it only works when you do it exactly right and give it 100% of your focus."

Re: OnStar will be selling our speed, location and seatbelt usage after December?

Originally Posted by RippyPartsDept

Yeah, I agree... I was responding to Aron9000's comment that "It forces you to take your eyes off the road to change the climate control, adjust the radio, turn on the seat heaters, and like an iphone, it only works when you do it exactly right and give it 100% of your focus."

I didn't know there was a voice command portion. I still think its a needlessly fiddly system, the regular Ford radio and HVAC controls are a lot more logical and easy to use without taking your eyes off the road.